Good and Evil, American Patriotism, Top Movies

Three Point Thursday

Happy Three Point Thursday.

This week’s edition features a profound passage from one of the greatest novels of all time, some polling and thoughts on American pride, and a list of fifteen cinematic masterpieces.

The Fourth of July, 1916, Childe Hassam

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1. John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil?¹ Have I done well—or ill?”

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2. Born in the U.S.A.

National pride in the U.S. has fallen to a new low, according to a recent Gallup poll in which only 58% of Americans said they are extremely proud to be one. This is down from 87% in 2001. Interestingly, there is a sharp partisan divide. While 92% of Republicans said they are very proud, only 36% of Democrats responded the same. This reflects one of the things that I dislike most about the left: their self-loathing and naive hatred for America and Western Civilization. On the other hand, what is also contemptible is ignorant people on the right who are blindly nationalistic, overly hostile towards other cultures, and not even capable of articulating why the US and the West are great. Despite this negativity, I remain convinced that most Americans are sensible moderates—independents in spirit who can see good points and ideas on both sides, and who, deep down, love this magnificent country. Yet thanks in part to social media, maniacs on the extremes of the left and right often dominate the discourse. So, this Fourth of July weekend, let us forget that, and instead remember what unites most of us, and listen to the song Most People Are Good by Luke Bryan, or something like that.

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3. If culture is a body, great movies are the bones.

One of my favorite things to do in high school was stay up until three in the morning watching movies by myself. Doing this made me think of myself as a movie connoisseur. (Who isn’t though?) So later on, in college, I took a class called Film Studies. It was fun, writing and thinking about what makes a movie great on a deeper level. Which is why I wanted to do it again here, by attempting the impossible: rank-ordering my top movies of all time. Here is my tentative list:

1. Interstellar

2. The Dark Knight

3. The Godfather Part II

4. Good Will Hunting

5. Gladiator

6. Inglourious Basterds

7. Django Unchained

8. Rocky IV

9. The Departed

10. No Country for Old Men

11. Jaws

12. Saving Private Ryan

13. 2001: A Space Odyssey

14. Master and Commander

15. Shutter Island

Thoughts? What would you take away or add?

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1. I would be remiss if I didn’t also include this quote in a post with good and evil in the title:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago